Zika

The first documented locally-acquired case of Zika in the continental U.S this year has been detected in Hidalgo County, at the southern tip of Texas. There's no indication this is the start of a large scale outbreak.

Researchers are eager to test promising vaccines against Zika, the virus that sparked a global health emergency last year.

But uncertainty over whether the Zika epidemic will continue affects researchers' ability to finish testing vaccines. They need locations with an active viral outbreak to conduct large-scale human trials and make sure the vaccine actually protects against disease.

There could be Zika cases in Texas we missed this year, according to experts in the state. That became clearer after health officials closely monitored a small area in South Texas earlier this month and found several additional cases of locally-transmitted Zika.

One big question about the Zika virus has been how big a risk the virus might pose in the United States.

Studies earlier this year suggested that birth defects and other problems were mainly limited to babies born in some parts of Brazil.

A study out Tuesday provides a sense of the effects on women who were exposed while pregnant in other countries and then came to the United States. About 6 percent of those pregnancies resulted in defects in the fetus or baby.

In Texas, the Zika virus hasn’t had quite the impact as it has had in Florida or parts of Latin and South America. But the state has been vigilant in fighting the virus – with efforts like public awareness campaigns and mosquito repellent distribution to low-income mothers through Medicaid.

Houston-based Legacy Community Health Services, a federally qualified health center, is trying hard to fight the Zika virus. It's screening pregnant women and following federal guidelines to test people at risk.

For about a month now, Texas has provided mosquito repellant to low-income women and children. It’s in an effort to prevent the spread of Zika – just in case the virus infects local mosquito populations.

The Rio Olympics have come and gone, but the spread of Zika virus internationally remains a threat for the United States. The CDC is actively monitoring two clusters of the virus in Florida. Government officials expect that Zika will eventually spread. Meanwhile, vaccine candidates are being rushed through clinical trials, but won't be available at least until the spring of 2017.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that for now, it’s important to contain Zika and to raise public awareness about its effects.

University Of Texas Professor Sahotra Sarkar chuckles when he thinks of how often he’s been interviewed the past six months.

Reporters have been calling the professor of philosophy and integrated biology more now than in his entire 20-year academic career. It’s all because of a map he and his colleagues created, which accurately predicted when and where Zika would hit the U.S.

Media accounts of Zika, Ebola and SARS sometimes give the impression that they are new viruses, when in fact evidence suggests they’ve been around for a long time in their natural hosts — animals. Today on Think, Krys Boyd spoke to Jonna Mazet, a University of California - Davis epidemiology professor, about the spread of Zika and other infectious diseases. Mazet is featured in the PBS documentary “Spillover: Zika, Ebola and Beyond,” which airs tonight at 9 on KERA TV.

With federal funding to fight Zika stuck in Congress, and amid news that mosquito-to-human transmission of the virus has reached the continental U.S., Texas officials announced on Wednesday they would allow Medicaid to pay for mosquito repellent for women, in the hopes of preventing the disease.

With federal funding to fight Zika stuck in Congress, and amid news that mosquito-to-human transmission of the virus has reached the continental U.S., Texas officials announced on Wednesday they would allow Medicaid to pay for mosquito repellent for women, in the hopes of preventing the disease.

National Institutes of Health / Kuhn and Rossmann research groups, Purdue University

The news about the Zika virus has accelerated this week. A newborn in the Houston area tested positive for Zika-related microcephaly. Doctors are also trying to figure out how an elderly Utah man was infected without transmission through sex or mosquito bites. These developments come as a new study from UT Southwestern Medical Center finds that Zika can infect brain cells and hide itself from the immune system.

Mimi Garcia recalls reading a string of news stories about the Zika virus, the mosquito-borne illness linked to birth defects spreading in Latin America, in late February and early March, around the time she learned she was pregnant with her second child.

The Texas Medical Association has picked a North Texas doctor to be its next president. What stands out about him is what he’s been through. Almost a decade ago, Dr. Don Read nearly died from the West Nile Virus.

As the fetus's brain starts to grow, it creates pressure, which pushes on the skull and causes it to grow. But if something stops brain growth — such as a virus — pressure on the skull drops. And the skull can collapse down onto the brain.